"You know him?" the policeman asked.
"Yeah, he's down. We're in class together. Known him for years."
"You look a little addled, miss."
"Well . . . I don't know. Maybe I am. Yeah."
"But it doesn't have anything to do with what happened at the museum, right?" he asked with a smile.
She looked away, feeling heat across her face.
"Now," the detective said, setting the steaming plate in front of her. "Chow down. Nothing like turkey tetrazzini to soothe a troubled soul. You know, I might just ask 'em for the recipe."
Chapter Eleven
These'd do just fine.
Thompson Boyd looked down at his purchases in the basket, then started for the checkout counter. He just loved hardware stores. He wondered why that might be. Maybe because his father used to take him every Saturday to an Ace Hardware outside of Amarillo to stock up on what the man needed for his workshop in the shed outside their trailer.
Or maybe it was because in most hardware stores, like here, all the tools were clean and organized, the paint and glues and tapes were all ordered logically and easy to find.
Everything arranged by the book.
Thompson liked the smell too, sort of a pungent fertilizer/oil/solvent smell that was impossible to describe, but one that everyone who'd ever been in an old hardware store would recognize instantly.
The killer was pretty handy. This was something he'd picked up from his dad, who, even though he spent all day with tools, working on oil pipelines, derricks and the bobbing, dinosaur-head pumps, would still spend lots of time patiently teaching his son how to work with--and respect--tools, how to measure, how to draw plans. Thompson spent hours learning how to fix what was broken and how to turn wood and metal and plastic into things that hadn't existed. Together they'd work on the truck or the trailer, fix the fence, make furniture, build a present for his mom or aunt--a rolling pin or cigarette box or butcher block table. "Big or small," his father taught, "you put the same amount of skill into what you're doing, son. One's not better or harder than the other. It's only a question of where you put the decimal point."
His father was a good teacher and he was proud of what his son built. When Hart Boyd died he had with him a shoeshine kit the boy had made, and a wooden key chain in the shape of an Indian head with the wood-burned letters "Dad" on it.
It was fortunate, as it turned out, that Thompson learned these skills because that's what the business of death is all about. Mechanics and chemistry. No different from carpentry or painting or car repair.
Where you put the decimal point.
Standing at the checkout stand, he paid--cash, of course--and thanked the clerk. He took the shopping bag in his gloved hands. He started out the door, paused and looked at a small electric lawn mower, green and yellow. It was perfectly clean, polished, an emerald jewel of a device. It had a curious appeal to him. Why? he wondered. Well, since he'd been thinking of his father it occurred to him that the machine reminded him of times he'd mow the tiny yard behind his parents' trailer, Sunday morning, then go inside to watch the game with his dad while his mother baked.
He remembered the sweet smell of the leaded gas exhaust, remembered the gunshot-sounding crack when the blade hit a stone and flung it into the air, the numbness in his hands from the vibration of the grips.
Numb, the way you'd feel as you lay dying from a sidewinder snakebite, he assumed.
He realized that the clerk was speaking to him.
"What?" Thompson asked.
"Make you a good deal," the clerk said, nodding at the mower.
"No thanks."
Stepping outside, he wondered why he'd spaced out--what had so appealed to him about the mower, why he wanted it so much. Then he had the troubling idea that it wasn't the family memory at all. Maybe it was because the machine was really a small guillotine, a very efficient way to kill.
Maybe that was it.
Didn't like that thought. But there it was.
Numb . . .
Whistling faintly, a song from his youth, Thompson started up the street, carrying the shopping bag in one hand and, in the other, his briefcase, containing his gun and billy club and a few other tools of the trade.
He continued up the street, into Little Italy, where the crews were cleaning up after the street fair yesterday. He grew cautious, observing several police cars. Two officers were talking to a Korean fruit stand owner and his wife. He wondered what that was about. Then he continued on to a pay phone. He checked his voice mail once more, but there were no messages yet about Geneva's whereabouts. That wasn't a concern. His contact knew Harlem pretty good, and it'd only be a matter of time until Thompson found out where the girl went to school and where she lived. Besides, he could use the free time. He had another job, one that he'd been planning for even longer than Geneva Settle's death, and one that was just as important as that job.